


What are you going to do now?

by Darke_Eco_Freak



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Multi, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 21:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18786577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darke_Eco_Freak/pseuds/Darke_Eco_Freak
Summary: Honestly, Harry James Potter never expected to make it this far in life. He didn't think he'd have the chance to live past the prophecy or the battle. When he walked into the forest, he was well and truly walking to his death, but he lived. He's alive and he's got to piece together a future from the tatters. Damn good thing he's got Ron and Hermione, as always.





	What are you going to do now?

“What are you going to do now Harry?” Hermione asks…asks after.

After they’ve gotten a chance to sleep, not long mind but a few hours. She asks with scratches scabbing over on her face and blood dried into her ratty sleeves. She’s still wearing the clothes she changed into after they jumped into the lake, a too short jumper and jeans with worn thin knees.

“I dunno Mione,” he mumbles, staring up at the familiar canvas of his very own four poster bed.

He’s had this bed since he was eleven years old, the very first bed he ever felt really, truly comfortable in. There’s a cobweb in the top right corner and a chip in the post, and the covers are a mess of dirt and ash and…well he doesn’t really know what else. He should probably wash it before the stains set, soak it a bit and hope for the best?

“Things are…a right mess down there,” Hermione sighs, rubbing a hand across her eyes and sitting on Neville’s bed.

Honestly, really, Harry feels like his thoughts are stuck in treacle because everything’s taking so long to make sense. He doesn’t need to wash his sheets, he’s got magic. He should be down in the Great Hall helping everyone…well just helping, because he’s Harry Potter and he just ended a war but there’s so much more to do.

He got a whole five hours? At least according to his watch, the watch that belonged to someone else who fought in a war but didn’t make it out. Lord.

“And Ron?” he sighs as he swings his legs off the bed and sits himself up. Mione looks even worse when he’s looking at her properly. Hair’s a mess, dark bags under her eyes, exhaustion dragging her shoulders down in a slouch; she looks about as good as could be expected really. Which isn’t much.

There’s a haunted something in her eyes, a spider-web of steel-backed composure blocking out all the worst of what she’s feeling, and Harry wonders if he’s the same. Can she see the utter, bollicking fear still locked up in his chest? He was a horcrux, told her as much, but he still doesn’t…it’s a lot to take in.

Tom Riddle stitched a bit of his dirty, disgusting soul into Harry, into **_him_**. And now it’s gone. After a round seventeen years, it’s gone, and he really doesn’t know how to feel about that. Can’t tell if he feels different at all, if it’s something he’d be even able to feel. What would he even look for?

“Downstairs with the rest, Madam Pomfrey had to give George a calming draught and there’s talk of how the funerals will go,” Mione explains, picking away at her sleeves.

He breathes, slow, deep, and closes his eyes. Downstairs there’s dozens of people trying to sort themselves out. Some of them lost family, some of them don’t have anyone else, some of them don’t have any ** _where_** else, and Harry knows he has to help them. He has to go downstairs and at least put in a showing, let everyone know that he’s fine, and if he can be fine.

If after all this terrible, nasty, bloody mess, Harry Potter can still go down and eat dinner in the Great Hall, no matter how damaged and broken apart it is. No matter how deathly tired and exhausted he looks. No matter how much he’d rather curl up in a dark corner for the next hundred years. If Harry Potter can have dinner in the Great Hall, then maybe everything’ll be alright.

“We’ll start with dinner,” he says, using the post to get back to his shaky feet. They ache, feet, calves, thighs, everything aches, but he can still stand.

His glasses are slip sliding off his nose and he’s sure they’re broken, but he’s still got them. He can still see the desperate kind of hopeless hope in his best friend’s eyes and knows this is the right thing to do.

Harry takes another breath, forces a watery smile and holds his hand out.

There’s dirt under his nails—blood too—and a nasty purpling bruise along the side of his wrist, and his knuckles are a scabbed over mess, but Hermione takes his hand. Grabs for it like and holds on tight, like she did when they were first years solving Snape’s potions puzzle. Holds on tight like every time they apparated over this last terrible year.

Hermione holds his hand like she trusts wherever he’ll lead, and it settles the screaming anxiety in his chest, just a touch, but it’s enough.

“Let’s,” she says, voice warbling and unsteady, but her shoulders square off and he knows she’s stronger than she looks right now. He only hopes he can be half as strong as all that.

They wander like that, hand in hand, through the empty, broken halls. Clutching at each other and trying not to let the broken castle all around break them anymore. And when they finally get to the Great Hall, people look up at them.

Heads swivel round, necks crane and people whisper, all of them looking to see who’s this now?

No one tells them anything, but everyone watches. Everyone who’s not leaning on the table, falling asleep leant against someone else, is looking at them. A lake more than the sea of eyes Harry’s used to but they’re all the same eyes. All closed off and hesitant, scared and tired and waiting for the other shoe to drop; for the war to start back up wands blazing and curses slinging.

Hermione’s fingers squeeze tight, her nails dig into his hand and her breath catches, but Harry doesn’t let on. He leads her through the hall right to their table, right where Mrs Weasley and Ginny are already sitting, and right where Ron’s saved their seats for them.

“Hallo Mione, Harry,” Ron says, taking Harry’s free hand and shuffling around so all three of them can sit squashed together.

No one says anything about how close they’re all sitting, nearly on top of each other, and no one says a word as they start eating. Sometimes Harry needs one hand or the other to eat, but Ron and Hermione lace their fingers back together when he’s done. Halfway through they just feed him, spoonfuls of warm soup that chases away the chill in his bones, treacle tart that’s sweet and soft and just like its always been.

Everyone else starts eating again, starts talking again, but their eyes keep drifting back over, and Harry knows it because they want to be sure this is all okay. Still okay. And sat between his two best friends in the world, the two people that stood by him and wouldn’t let him run off without them. Sat there while Mione feeds him toast and Ron smears jam on his cheek with a wobbly grin, well, Harry thinks it all might be okay too.

* * *

 

The summer flies by in a glaze of unnaturally sunny days and panic and sadness so brittle it breaks and shreds the inside of his throat.

More than once he apparates over to Bill and Fleur’s seaside hideaway and goes wandering the beach. Sometimes Ron comes with him, in between getting George and the store back on their feet. They go swimming, Ron teaches him to spot riptides and fills Harry’s tense silence with talk about the shop.

They’ve got orders trickling back in, people who need a good laugh or two. Sometimes George disappears for hours and Ron gets left behind to deal with it all, and when George gets back they shout themselves hoarse. Those are nights Ron will show up at Grimmauld place and stomp into Harry’s bedroom. Grumbling and mumbling about George this and Wheezes that, he’ll climb under the covers and put his cold feet on Harry’s.

Sometimes Hermione comes with him, needs the break from the hectic restoration work. Headmistress McGonagall handpicked her to help with the restoration of the castle, partly because Hermione is one of the few people she’d trust to get all the enchantments right, and partly because it gives Hermione some kind of stability. Still a lot of work though, and when she feels like she’s drowning in all of it, she comes out to the beach with him.

Sometimes all three of them end up there together and they get to have lunch in the shade of the cliff, or they can just play around in the shallows. And, if it’s particularly bad, they head out in Bill’s little rowboat. Harry will take one oar, Ron will take the other, and they’ll row out as far from shore as Hermione lets them. Then, she’ll cast a silencing charm, and they’ll scream as loud as they possibly can.

Truthfully, Harry can’t say how many times they all go out and scream. Scream and bellow and shout all kinds of curses across the water. Sometimes they cry, they scream and they sob, and they breakdown like they didn’t get the chance to do all through their hunt. Ron will cry for Fred, and he’ll say how it’s not fair, and why’s he got to be the one to deal with George the most?

And Mione will cry about Hogwarts and her parents and why does everyone think she has all the answers? She’s trying so hard and she’s making progress and why can’t they all see that? And Harry…Harry’ll spit through grit tight teeth that he never asked for this. He never wanted to be anyone’s chosen savior, he never wanted to watch all these people die for him, and he never wanted to be anyone’s sacrificial lamb.

There’s a lot that happens that summer. Trials and court cases, standing witness for Draco Malfoy of all people and helping put away the very last of the death eaters. Severus Snape gets recognized for the work he did but…but Harry won’t ever remember him as a good person. Severus Snape worked for the good side, but he was far from a good person.

Harry gets invited to funerals. Funerals for the people who gave their lives for— _him_ —Hogwarts and it’s a gut punch, whirlwind time. He has to put in at least a few minutes at each one, if not for the ceremony then the wakes afterwards. He has to talk to the parents who’re burying their children, he has to meet the siblings of all these brave people, the grandparents crying into their kerchiefs.

There’s so many of them and Harry can barely keep the faces straight in his head, but he never forgets the names. He remembers the name of every single person that gave their lives fighting against the death eaters, against Voldemort himself, because it’s the least he can do for them.

Hermione scolds him, says he needs to take care of himself and that he’s losing himself to the grief, but he can’t stop going. He goes to Colin Creevey’s funeral and bites his lips the whole way through, can barely look Dennis in the face or talk to his parents. He comes home from that funeral with a hole in his heart and broken glass in his throat.

Ron doesn’t say anything to him about it, doesn’t think there’s much to say because he knows how stubborn Harry is. They go to Lavender’s funeral together and Ron holds his hand tight the whole time, while Parvati sobs into her kerchief and Trelawny watches hard eyed and pale faced. They both take some time to talk to Lavender’s parents, to at least offer their condolences, and they pick up a bottle of fire whiskey on the way home.

Regulus Black gets a proper remembrance as one of the very few Death Eaters to ever turn against Voldemort, as one of the few pure-blood Slytherins to stand against everything he’d ever been told. Regulus Arcturus Black gets recognised for the part he played, same as his brother, and Harry doesn’t know how he feels about any of that.

Sirius and Regulus, they both died fighting the same fight, against a monster of a man and against monstrous beliefs, and they never knew. Harry’s living in the house they must’ve both hated, cleans it up, makes it livable and actually a fair place to come home to at the end of the day, and they’ll never know.  

Dobby and Kreacher get statues in their honour, though Kreacher’s fine and Dobby is not. They both deserve the recognition for what they did, for why they fought. They weren’t just servants fighting the wars their masters forced them to join, they both fought for what they believed in. Harry commissions statues of Dobby in all his glory, tea cozies a plenty, and Kreacher with his locker, and sets them in the Ministry of Magic.

No one dares argue with him the day he asks for them to replace the heinous thing Riddle had.

After all the funerals, every last one, Hermione and all the professors erect four marble pillars down by the lake. They use all kinds of magics on them to make sure nothing will ever move them, or break them, or wear them down, and then they put the names of every single person in that marble. Every one of the sixty-two people that died at the Battle for Hogwarts gets their name carved into something that will stand forever.

When he gets the time, in between sorting out his affairs and making Grimmauld place somewhat livable, Harry heads down to the pillars. He reads the names there and tries to match them to a face, sometimes it’s a living face, sometimes not. Sometimes he just stands by the lake with the pillars at his back and breathes.

Somewhere between the last spell slung and the first funeral held, Harry meets his godson and falls arse over tits in love with that little boy. Teddy Lupin’s got his father’s smile, some of the time, and his mother’s hair, most of the time, and Harry loves him. Teddy Lupin is full of giggles and burbling baby nonsense and he’s such a wonderful little thing that it scares Harry.

Scares him that someone will take this little boy away from him, steal him away. Sometimes he wakes up trembling and sweating and so sure Teddy’s gone that he has to apparate over. Ron will grumble after him and Hermione will call, but Harry can’t stop himself when he wakes up like that. He’ll show up at Andromeda’s gate and knock on her door at tits o’clock, but she’ll always be there to let him in.

She’ll shuffle off to put on the kettle and Harry will run to Teddy’s room, will collapse by the cot with the happily sleeping baby. He’ll kneel there, trembling and shaking, sometimes crying, until Andromeda comes to get him. She’ll lead him down the hall back to the kitchen and force some tea in him, and when Mione and Ron come to collect him, she’ll force some tea into them too.

Sometimes in the last month before Hogwarts is set to reopen, Hermione mentions Hagrid wanting to rebuild his hut properly. He never got a good chance after it burnt down that night and now that he’s moving back in, he’ll need a place to stay. Harry and Ron get George to help them, and between the three of them, they get it done in a week.

A week of planning out the insides with Hagrid, trying to get him to expand a bit, trying to show him the sense in having a floo network, if only to the castle. In the end, the hut gets only a smidgen bigger and there’s no floo, there is a larger garden though so that’s nice. And when they’re done, Hagrid invites all three of them in for a cuppa and some scones. They pass on the scones.

Harry gets about fifty owls from Gringotts, none of them bills for the dragon, and suddenly he’s about fifty times richer than he was. People bequeathed him their family vaults, people who didn’t think they would survive the war— _and were right_ —left him their fortunes and their lands. There’s so much paperwork to fill out and sort through and the goblins are persnickety the entire way through, it’s a bit comforting that.

For a brief period of a week, Harry owns about half of Diagon Alley and a quarter of Knockturn, some night places in Hogsmeade, and an entire vineyard, along with more money than a single man could spend. Ron jokes about all the inherited titles he gets, Lord this and Sir that, but there’s no jealousy for any of it. Which is good, because Harry gives most of the money to charity, and to rebuilding, and keeps less than a quarter of the properties.

There’s trials and memorials and funerals— _Lord so many funerals_ —but there’s Hagrid and Teddy and long afternoons by the sea.

* * *

 

“What’re you gonna do Harry?” Ron asks from the bottom of the bed where he can’t see Harry’s shrug.

This is still Harry’s bedroom— _never Sirius’_ —but the other two end up in this bed just as much as he does. Ron says its because Harry has the nicest bed, which he does, and they need to take advantage of that. Hermione tries to reason it’s because of how close they all got during their travelling, she doesn’t sleep as well without the sound of them nearby. Harry doesn’t bother to explain, he just likes having them close, even if Ron’s feet are much too cold.

Said feet are kicking in the air as Ron plans out the new shop, they’re expanding with a new branch in Hogsmeade, something to give the new school year some pizazz. Hermione’s got her books and parchment laid out all around her, but she graciously lets Harry rest his head on her thigh. Half her lap is practically a divine boon when she’s working, and she’s always working these days.

“Dunno, I’m pretty much set for life as is,” he says after a bit, and he doesn’t feel guilty saying that anymore. Ron doesn’t bristle when he says it because Ron’s making money of his own now, enough to buy whatever nice thing he likes, and he understands better now. Funny what a fair year on the road running for your life does for a man.

“You could come back and finish your education,” Hermione suggests, viciously scratching out something while Ron snorts. Harry has to agree there.

He never planned on finishing his seventh year, not after the fifth. He wasn’t sure he’d live that long really, because maybe deep down, in a place he never wanted to think about, he’d thought the prophesy meant something quite different. Neither could live while the other survived? Both of them had to die then, obvious that, but maybe it meant they’d both die if one did? And maybe, just maybe, Harry’d thought about sacrificing himself to get rid of the great Tom Riddle.

If it came down the wire, if Dumbledore couldn’t handle it and the Order failed, then Harry wouldn’t. He’d kept that broken bit of mirror in his sock for a reason after all. Not the nicest thoughts but fair ones, it was a war after all.

Either way, he’d never planned for a seventh year and going back for one now doesn’t _sound_ very appealing. Hogwarts was already his second home and he didn’t think McGonagall would mind him sitting in for a class or two. Hermione’s head of the restoration efforts but Harry helped out, visited all the places Fred and George had laid traps that no one else knew about, took care of the curses there.

He was already working with Hagrid to add another half dozen secret entrances, just in case people ever needed to get out quick again. Working with Hagrid mostly involved pouring over the Marauders’ map in the hut and plotting things out, but he was still learning quite a bit.

“Why not go up for DA professor? I think taking out a Dark Lord singlehandedly can make up for missing N.E.W.Ts,” Ron teases and Hermione pelts a crumbled bit of parchment at his head.

“Oi! Just a suggestion,” he grumbles when it makes perfect contact, and Harry...considers it.

He used to think about becoming an auror, someone that fought dark wizards for a living and knew more about offensive magic than anyone else really. Course, that was when he thought the final fight with Tom would be years away in the future, not just two from then. Lord, back in fifth year his biggest problem was Umbridge and figuring out how to talk with Sirius, and now this.

Now auror’s well and truly off the table, though Kingsley would love to have him and would probably make him head of department in a heartbeat, it’s not for him. Harry’s had enough of being cursed at by dark wizards and running for his life through dark forests. All he really wants is a nice quiet life, and if he can’t have that, then there’s nowhere he’d rather be than Hogwarts.

Tom cursed that position, no one more than a year since he didn’t get it, and oddly enough, Tom Riddle himself has been interfering with the DA professor for the past seven years. First Quirrel and part of Tom’s soul, then Lockhart and the diary, Remus with Wormtail’s mad scramble to help a nasty master, then Moody and Barty Crouch Jr. Umbridge didn’t exactly fit the mould but what did he really expect for the old toad?

At least she left because of something related to ole Tom so Harry supposed it worked. Snape took the position for sixth but then he got a cushy promotion for what would’ve been seventh by the man himself, so yes, Tom had shown up every time to make sure his curse was working. And now he’s gone, and Harry’s still here, so maybe.

“Yeah, think I might Ron,” he says, summoning a notebook and pen. Hermione can fiddle with quills all day long if she likes but Harry much prefers muggle writing tools. Ballpoint pens make life the kind of easy Harry really needs these days.

“Harry, you can’t really think—” Hermione starts then stops, looking away from her notes to stare him down. There’s a blob of ink on her nose and her eyes are tired but it’s the good kind of tired. It’s regular old, Hermione tired again, and Harry grins up at her.

And maybe his grin is a bit tired too, wearing thin at the edges, because her eyes go soft. She sighs one of her big “ _really now_ ” sighs and reaches down to ruffle his already wild hair. He knows she’d say more, so much more, about how he shouldn’t decide these kinds of things on a whim, how he might not even get the position, and is he really sure he wants this? He knows her voice would go soft at the end, quiet, because they’re all still jagged at the edges.

They all need a bit of soft these days, after so many without it.

“I dunno, seems like the thing to do, and it’ll give me a reason to be lurking round,” he says, and tries not to think about all the people who **_won’t_** be lurking round. So many people aren’t going back for a seventh year, and quite a few aren’t around to make the choice.

The whole school’s getting a do over year, from the should-be-seventh-but-are-still-sixth years go right back to the first years. They’ll have nine full forms actually. The new firsties and then everyone repeating their years, including the handful of “ _eighth years_ ” McDonagall’s invited back. And it sounds mad, utterly mad, to fill a school to the bursting with nine forms all told, but they’ll have the space.

Between the ones who died and the ones who’ve fled the country and the ones who’re just too broken down to come back just yet, they'll be lucky to make four hundred students this year. They’ll have more forms than they’ve ever had and less students to match. Harry doesn’t think there’s a better year to test things out, no one knows what’ll happen this year and everyone’d forgive him if he mucked it all up.

If this doesn’t play out, then he’ll go into quidditch like Ginny’s been saying he should, and never speak of this again.

“Alright Harry,” Hermione says nearly too quiet to hear. Maybe she sees all the things he’s not said in the worn edges of his smile, same as he sees all her arguments in her tired eyes. Maybe they just understand each other, whichever’s fine with him.

“Brilliant! Now we can start moving into the Hogsmeade flat, George already set up the floo for it,” Ron says ever so smug and Hermione squawks when she realises she got set up.

And Harry, Harry barks a laugh so loud it hurts his chest. Maybe things really will be okay for them. 

**Author's Note:**

> tbh I never once thought I'd be posting something for Harry Potter but after camp nano, I got an email about the anniversary of the battle of hogwarts and was struck with the need to make something for it and here we are.


End file.
